Kuwait takes on VoIP
In the world of developing countries, invention is a foreign word, and technologies are only acquired from the western countries instead. This becomes hard to swallow for many, but we can live with it. The problem gets bigger when they become selective on what is a useful technology and what is a harmful one. Few years back, the Ministry of Transportation arranged with all ISPs in Kuwait to block porn sites and other sites they find harmful. You can expect how many eligible sites got banned on the way. MetaCafe and YouTube got affected recently, and some Kuwaiti Blogs even were blocked. So it seems we are becoming more and more like China. Now they want to ban the VoIP sites that allows people to make international calls, simply because it’s costing them money! To put it in another way, the new technology will save people 20 million KD that the government prefers to keep to it to itself instead. It’s a pretty shame for the people who spent their time and money to make this VoIP dream a reality.
It is worth mentioning however that while we pay around $650 annual 256 kbps DSL registration fees (in advance), and not very rarely the network is extremely slow and you can do nothing about it, you start having to use a Proxy eventually to by pass what government does not like you to see. The proxy ofcourse becomes the bottlenick here, not to mention other possible browsing issues. The government wants to control and protects its people from harmful content, so they blocked porn sites. However down all shops you can find the pirated uncensored film movies for 3 bucks, and even original ones in major store like Virgin. Original DVDs are available there, and no one is doing anything against it. $55 Showtime TV subscription is also available to show all the uncensored movies, but since it’s a business with money in, no one is doing anything about it. Whenever the money might go out, or there is harm without money in, government wants to take action. One of the other great services not available in Kuwait also is PayPal. I am not sure now whether this is from the ministry or not, but it definitely opens the door for some real nice services like Skype and eBay.
Now, instead of investing in upgrading the ISP networks, giving us more stability and faster bandwidth, they would like to monitor and control our browsing more. For the past 4 weeks I have not had two consecutive days with stable connection. Even though I paid for the media, when it is available in good shape, the government wants to restrict my use of that media. Right now, if you are traveling and someone gives you a ring on your roaming phone, you get charged per minute even if you don’t answer it. So a ring is worth $3 sometimes. I saw a full real big bill of missed calls the customer got charged for just the missed calls. If the government wants people to follow what they call the legal ways, they better try to make it in reasonable prices.
You can find a translation of the news article from Al-Watan Newspaper here. Original source for Arabic readers is here.
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Comments
From Blocking non-pornographic sites to opposing the VoIP I find MOC doing nothing other than holding back this country from advancing in the telecommunications field.
They’re doing a poor job providing phone lines to the relatively new areas (such as South Surrah) and doing nothing about the obviously over-priced fees we pay to the ISPs. (Oh by the way: Fiber Optics-based Infrastructure was laid in most South Surrah and people finally cheered when their lines got connected after a long wait, but wait! the catch is ISPs currently can’t provide broadband Internet connections to some of them at the meantime for the fact that they are too fat away from the exchange? (DSL rules still apply on Fiber-Optics based connections? I am asking cause I am really not sure, I have to look it up sometime!)
I agree with Qwaiti that we ARE using the MOC wires and equipment but isn’t the MOC’s main rule is to provide a robust communications Infrastructure? I also agree when someone says we pay almost nothing for using ground lines compared to other countries but to be frank I wish we can PAY a bit more to get a much better service! For example, Anybody else finds that our Postal Services is as good as using a slingshot to send your mail? (Unless it is Registered or Premium Mail of course!)
When I was in the UK on training I ordered an Item from a trader on Amazon.co.uk and asked him to send it to my hotel via Royal Mail Next day service (that was 5 days before Christmas eve there so you can imagine the mail traffic) it still reached me even though a British lady in the training center I went to claimed that they have the worst mail service ever! I wish she would come and see ours where mailmen toss the mail bags on the side of the highway if they don’t feel like delivering!
At the end, sorry for a reply that is almost as long as the blog post itself, I just hope that M.O.C will improve or step aside and allow the private sector to compete in favor of the consumer.
Update:
Another news article from Al-Watan newspaper:
http://www.alwatan.com.kw/Default.aspx?MgDid=466269&pageId=26
The philosophy M.O.C is following is simple:
” Either we get it or no one else will. ”
By *it* they mean our money spent on International calls.
I’m sorry but: …..M.O.C Sucks!
Well here is a start. Go to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ and download Firefox. If it works, you can tell me how you came to post your question here then.
Well, I used it several times. I don’t think they will charge you for it as an individual, but they see it as an evil thing and in co-ordination with Yahoo Kuwaiti accounts seems to be getting blocked.
I am a VoIP user in Canada where internet speed is not a big factor. I also know people who talk to their family in Q8 using VoIP phones from the States/Canada.
I think the MOC should regulate the VoIP use by asking for a fee for Digital Internet Lines (as is the case in Saudi). This should be the maximum they do. After all, we ARE using the MOC wires and equipments.
A.